Summer Reverie

J U L Y 2 0 1 5

The pages of summer are turning now, like a big children’s book with large print telling simpler stories than winter did, the pages falling lazily open, almost by themselves, pages showing quiet dawns with only birds around, then breakfasts and plans happening, then stories of wonderment and fear that fill the noons and afternoons, stories that end always back home at evening with stars in a sky painted aquamarine, and then we sleep.

We dream. We dream slow roiling dreams of how all this has come to be, how over millions of seasons and days we were made from light and the stuff of stones and water, how we were fashioned into plants and animals, into canopies of leaves swaying, into small paws on the forest floor, and then a sudden click of stick, our ears go up, and then a pounce and we change form, again and again, all of it changing, all of it given, the sun given to warm us, the earth given to hold us, the dream given for us to see we are the given, given here as the merest drop of sperm and egg, given to grow in the womb of our mother, given there the same as we are given now, given now the same as the moment we were lifted from our mother and given to her breast, given to be beings like this, walking on two feet, the planet looking out of our eyes, us upright, free moving, vertical with voice above heart above belly above knees above feet, unrooted from the planet but given from it, everything, all of it, given!

We wake, still half dreaming, and ask, “What has given all this?” But almost as soon as we ask we know that if we try to answer we’ll be just making something up, for this that gives is hidden in the given and can’t be taken out.

“But is something asked of us?” we wonder. “We’ve been given everything! Everything! For what? Is something asked of us?”

Lightly we fall asleep again and dream these words:

“Miraculous Beings! You are given to give! You are given to give! Give thanks! Give praise! Give love! Give warmth! Give forgiveness! Give kindness! Give!”